Mountains of sawdust (360g plywood, LED, Arduino build)

[der_wille_zur_macht]

I don't remember where I talked about the reinforcements, sorry. I've been thinking it's time to do another index - I did one maybe 5 or 6 pages ago, so I'd start by looking there.

FWIW though, my reinforcements were pretty specific to the "features" of my home, which is very far from conventional construction - it's about 200 years old, with a mostly dirt-floor dry fit stone foundation, and post-and-beam construction. There are two original beams running directly under the tank. One is stupidly large, like 16" square, and the other is roughly 4" x 8" or so. In theory these massive beams would have been more than sturdy enough, but given that their condition is largely unknown I did the reinforcements anyways. What I did was lay a 4x4 along the bottom of each beam for the length of the aquarium, and placed a vertical 4x4 under each beam, with it's foot resting in a 60-lb precast concrete pier block that was set into ~4" of concrete I poured to lock the blocks into the original floor.

In a modern house with modern joists your approach would probably be much different.

As far as stuff in the stand vs. the basement - all "live" equipment is in the stand - sump, pumps, and so on. The basement houses two ~30g rubbermaid containers to act as a water change station, plus the RO/DI unit and some other "offline" equipment. That said, the area under the stand is pretty much only half full - there's a lot of room in a 6' x 4' footprint, especially when the stand is this tall (don't remember exactly, but I think the bottom of the tank is something like 40 inches up).

If your tank ends up with a large footprint, you could probably fit everything underneath it. I went back and forth, but ended up putting the sump in the stand purely from an efficiency perspective - to pump the extra 8' or so from a basement sump and get the turnover I have, I would have been looking at another 200 watts of pump power. Plus, my basement is chilly year-round, so I would have needed more heater wattage.

Looking forward to your build thread!

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

I'm wondering if any of the readers have experience with a carlson surge device? Not the "reverse" carlson that's in the tank, but one mounted above water level?

I want a storage vessel above the tank that can hold ~5 gallons "statically." I will occasionally add another gallon, slowly, via peristaltic pump. I then want a siphon to trigger and suck a gallon out, such that it returns to it's previous 5 gallon volume.

I THINK this is really simple but without playing with some test cases I can't quite convince myself. This is what I can think up so far:

Don't laugh. It's a highly technical drawing.

There's a fill line on the left, a bulkhead in the bottom with PVC extending up into an upside-down U for the drain line, and an emergency drain line on the right. The lower red line represents the "static" volume, and is level with the opening in the inverted U. The higher red line represents the "maximum" water level, and is even with the curved section of the inverted U. When water is added, the water level will rise from the lower red line to the upper red line, at which point a siphon will start and quickly suck the vessel down to the lower red line.

Does this seem like it would work?

 

[krikor]

Looks like it will work just fine to me... but i why do you want 5 gals of water just sitting there, static?

Why not just make a 1 gal surge device?

I plan on modifying a few 5 gal buckets to create a couple of these above my frag tanks for cheap random flow. (but go with ~4gal surges in a 50 gal stock feed tank)

 

[swearint]

I have never built one, but remembered an old Sea Scope article. I was able to find it:

http://www.instantocean.com/sites/InstantOcean/knowledge/seascope/past/SS_Vol17_2000.pdf

Todd

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

Sorry, I jumped into that post in mid thought. This isn't for a surge to create water movement, it's for integrating my automatic water change with a live food prop tank.

This is my thought:

I will use standard methods (cut up soda bottle) to hatch a batch of brine shrimp. Once they're feeding adults, I'll move them in to a larger container and grow them out (fed with phyto) until they're reproducing. Then, I will put them in the surge container above the tank. Hopefully, this will "seed" the container with a self-sustaining population that I just need to feed each day with phyto.

My automated water change system works on virtue of two matched peristaltic pumps - one sucking water out of the tank down a drain, and the other taking new saltwater out of a storage tank and pumping it into the tank. These pumps take about 40 minutes to pump the volume I want to change (about a gallon) each day.

So, with the brine shrimp breeding actively in the surge tank, I can feed it with the new saltwater line from the auto water change system. Thus, once a day, a surge will be triggered, delivering a portion of the brine shrimp population into the tank.

Of course this is all VERY hypothetical at this point!

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

PS - I know I've said this already, but the shrimp/goby pair is AWESOME. Every one of you should try the combo at some time if you haven't seen it before. They're fascinating to watch together.

 

[Taqpol]

That design should absolutely work from a technical aspect, but I don't know enough about phyto culture to speculate on how it will work long term. Will a culture of brine shrimp sustain itself indefinitely if ~20% (1 gallon out of 5 gallons) is removed daily?

A few other thoughts: Lets say you have your tank set up perfectly where it has its 5 gallon static volume and your daily water change adds exactly 1 gallon and all 1 gallon of that exits the container in the surge. Now if your container evaporates some during the day (so it now holds 4.9 gallons, lets say) would adding exactly one gallon to that be enough to start the siphon? Even if it did, the siphon would eventually break at exactly 5 gallons and you would have only added 0.9 gallons of water to your tank but your matched peristaltic pump would have taken out the full 1 gallon, potentially leading to salinity issues over time.

Does any of this make sense? The actual levels of evaporation might be so low that it would never be noticeable, but I thought I would throw it out there as a thought experiment.

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

Taqpol, the issues you raise are what I'm currently struggling with.

I will absolutely have an "overall" balance, as the water added to the system will equal the water removed from the system.

However, as you suggest, the water added to the "food tank" will have to balance water moved from the food tank to the display tank via surge. I'm sure it would be impossible to exactly balance them, so I'm trying to figure out what it would mean if they were not the same. I'm struggling to think through how the levels in the system would change from day to day in the two possible cases:

1) Volume added to the food tank was less than the surge volume - I think the surge would simply not fire every "x" days

2) Volume added to the food tank was more than the surge volume - I think the surge would fire an extra time every "x" days

So basically salinity in the display tank would change by, at most, surge volume divided by system volume every "x" days. The surge volume is going to be about .25% of system volume, so I think that's a reasonable variation.

And I'll have to somehow deal with evaporation from the food tank. Otherwise, over time, the food tank will become more saline, and the display tank will be come less saline. (Ironically, it'll pretty much mimic the conditions that allowed brine shrimp to take over the great salt lake :lol. A problem to solve, for sure. I definitely don't want to be ATO'ing the food tank with freshwater, that's just silly.

 

[Foosinho]

FWIW though, my reinforcements were pretty specific to the "features" of my home, which is very far from conventional construction - it's about 200 years old, with a mostly dirt-floor dry fit stone foundation, and post-and-beam construction. There are two original beams running directly under the tank. One is stupidly large, like 16" square, and the other is roughly 4" x 8" or so. In theory these massive beams would have been more than sturdy enough, but given that their condition is largely unknown I did the reinforcements anyways. What I did was lay a 4x4 along the bottom of each beam for the length of the aquarium, and placed a vertical 4x4 under each beam, with it's foot resting in a 60-lb precast concrete pier block that was set into ~4" of concrete I poured to lock the blocks into the original floor.

Now it's coming back to me. It's easy to forget how old your home is, looking at photos of the tank area. Thanks.

In a modern house with modern joists your approach would probably be much different.

This home we are offering on is 1960s construction, with a full finished 8' ceiling height in the basement. I'm unsure which way the joists run, but where I envisioned the tank (SWMBO-approval pending, of course) is against the garage, which means one long edge of the tank is sitting right on a foundation wall. If I'm lucky, the beams run perpendicular to that wall and not parallel, and I can build a beefy load-bearing wall roughly underneath the other long edge of the tank.

If your tank ends up with a large footprint, you could probably fit everything underneath it. I went back and forth, but ended up putting the sump in the stand purely from an efficiency perspective - to pump the extra 8' or so from a basement sump and get the turnover I have, I would have been looking at another 200 watts of pump power. Plus, my basement is chilly year-round, so I would have needed more heater wattage.

This is definitely the dilemma I'm pondering. At 6'2" and 210lbs, those spaces tend to get crowded quickly.

Looking forward to your build thread!

I hope you are patient! Both for when I start it, and for how long the build takes. I'm sure the pace will make Galapagos tortoises look speedy.

Anyway, I don't want to pollute your thread with a tangent, I just had a few questions that I thought might apply to my situation. Asked and answered. Thanks!

Oh, I was considering using a RCSD for surges, but I was also thinking about surging a refugium in a similar way to what you are talking about. My idea was to surge the refugium, and just have the overflow dump straight into the tank, rather than making a small surge device in the refugium. I'm curious to see how this works for you.

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

If I try the food tank surge I will definitely post results here, but keep in mind it will be an extremely small, extremely infrequent surge! Like, a gallon once per day, as opposed to a traditional surge device which on this size tank might be more like 20 - 30 gallons once every few minutes.

 

[Luckless]

How much light and air exchange do you actually need? Would a system with a water tight cover that uses a free floating piston to make up the volume difference be usable? If there is no space for water to evaporate into, then you'll have very little to deal with.

 

[XSiVE]

what about the brine shrimp die off? ...and from a friend of mine who breeds fish and hatches brine, phytocultures, rotifers, etc: "brine shrimp are messy creatures, that tank would get nasty pretty quick.", apparently he lost a batch of dotty's a week ago when he didn't rinse off some freshly hatched brine before feeding them.

I think this is a cool idea but the practicality of it may fall short.. You may end up dumping dirtier water into the tank than you are taking out unless you cleaned this surge device every few days... disassembling it every few days to clean would kind of ruin the purpose of automation.

 

[widmer]

The brine shrimp surge - whether you use brine shrimp or some other sort of pod etc, that's brilliant. I might have to add one at some point... Wait, I haven't finished the new light...or the ATS... and my new tank isn't even here yet. Hmm

 

[kcress]

I'm wondering if any of the readers have experience with a carlson surge device? Not the "reverse" carlson that's in the tank, but one mounted above water level?

Lots of experience... I've built dozens. They've run in the local fish store even.

While visiting Marine World in Marin county, CA I noticed surges happening. I asked an employee about one. They promptly ushered me into the bowels of the place and showed me many of them running continuously. I was mesmerized by the simplicity of them.

Don't do it the way you are planning with a crook. Use a concentric design. Then your exit is out the bottom. You can set the height very easily. The screws are nylon and you just use your fingers on them. Use 3 around the tube at two levels, so you can maintain concentric alignment.

How much light and air exchange do you actually need? Would a system with a water tight cover that uses a free floating piston to make up the volume difference be usable? If there is no space for water to evaporate into, then you'll have very little to deal with.

Luckless; it's not about the space allowing evaporation but rather the humidity of the air above the surface. If you have an air tight box the size of a refrigerator, but it's sealed, water will evaporate until the humidity above the tank reaches a certain level then the evap will essentially stop.

As for the piston that's how your brake master cylinder works. There is a rubber membrane in the lid. As the level drops in the reservoir the rubber membrane is slowly sucked into the reservoir preventing any and all air from trying to replace the missing fluid. Works well.

 

[BennyFrank]

PS - I know I've said this already, but the shrimp/goby pair is AWESOME. Every one of you should try the combo at some time if you haven't seen it before. They're fascinating to watch together.

I've been going back and forth on having a pair in my new tank but I think you just convinced me. What depth of sandbed would you recommend? As of right now I only have about 2" but would add more to accomodate. Thanks.

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

kcress,

Does the outlet from the surge pipe need to be underwater (in the display tank)? Otherwise, I wonder if the rate I'm adding water will be so slow that it'll just trickle out the surge pipe and be replaced by air coming back up the pipe.

XSiVE, that's all stuff I don't know at this point. I will definitely be trying to establish a longterm-viable culture to evaluate how clean/stable I can get it before I build this. There was an article in a recent edition of Advanced Aquarist that made it sound really easy to establish a stable culture, so I have high hopes. In the end, this is going to be a very small volume compared to the system volume, so even if the water from the food tank is really dirty it shouldn't cause major issues. And heck, the detritus from the food tank is probably a viable food source for SOME sort of fish/coral/critter in the display tank. . .

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

I've been going back and forth on having a pair in my new tank but I think you just convinced me. What depth of sandbed would you recommend? As of right now I only have about 2" but would add more to accomodate. Thanks.

My sandbed slopes from about 2" at the thickest part (center/front of the tank) to zero near the back corners (there's probably a good 12 - 14" of bare bottom around the two back corners). The gobies have created two tunnels under rocks. Both are in about an inch of sand.

And keep in mind, while my shrimp is small, these are about the biggest shrimp gobies in the universe. The male is probably 5"+ and the female is almost 4". There are many species that are much smaller who might be happy living in less sand.

And another thought - if it's not deep enough for their liking, the shrimp will happily create a mound of sand at the opening of the tunnel to allow extra depth!

Last night the shrimp was arranging tiny empty snail shells to make a little hedge along one edge of the tunnel opening. Earlier he was playing with a larger shell on the other side of the opening and rearranged it at least a dozen times. I swear one day I'm going to look in there and there's going to be a little mailbox and a welcome mat and the shrimp is going to be out front with a lawnmower. . .

 

[Sugar Magnolia]

Last night the shrimp was arranging tiny empty snail shells to make a little hedge along one edge of the tunnel opening. Earlier he was playing with a larger shell on the other side of the opening and rearranged it at least a dozen times. I swear one day I'm going to look in there and there's going to be a little mailbox and a welcome mat and the shrimp is going to be out front with a lawnmower. . .

:lol: Pistol shrimp are AWESOME!

 

[XSiVE]

XSiVE, that's all stuff I don't know at this point. I will definitely be trying to establish a longterm-viable culture to evaluate how clean/stable I can get it before I build this. There was an article in a recent edition of Advanced Aquarist that made it sound really easy to establish a stable culture, so I have high hopes. In the end, this is going to be a very small volume compared to the system volume, so even if the water from the food tank is really dirty it shouldn't cause major issues. And heck, the detritus from the food tank is probably a viable food source for SOME sort of fish/coral/critter in the display tank. . .

Oh Im sure there are ways to get a stable culture going, my concern was if this was going to be part of the water change system it may defeat the purpose as you'd be putting just as much dirty in as taking out, the only benefit would be the additional trace elements from newer mixed salt.

If the brine surge operates as a separate system than the automated water changing setup, say, pumping water out of the display and into this as a typical surge device operates instead of fresh saltwater then I can see this being a non-issue as it'd be just like using tank water to thaw out a cube of food and then dumping it in.

in any case, give it a try.

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

If the brine surge operates as a separate system than the automated water changing setup, say, pumping water out of the display and into this as a typical surge device operates instead of fresh saltwater then I can see this being a non-issue as it'd be just like using tank water to thaw out a cube of food and then dumping it in.

Laying in bed wide awake at 4:30 this morning thinking about this idea, that's the conclusion I arrived at. It's still going to be a little awkward - how do I fill the food tank slowly enough that it only surges once or twice a day? Do I use a typical pump on a timer to only run for a few seconds a day? If so, I don't need the surge, I can just have an open standpipe in the brine tank. Then I won't have to worry about balancing the input with the surge volume.